In many cases, the end of the year gives you time to step back and take stock of the last 12 months. This is when many of us take a hard look at what worked and what did not, complete performance reviews, and formulate plans for the coming year. For me, it is all of those things plus a time when I u...

I wanted to reach out to all of you to address Cooper's settlement with the state and federal governments of claims arising out of the Cooper Heart Institute Advisory Board, which was established in 2004 and dissolved in 2010.

After more than three years of extended discussions with government lawyers, we decided, in the best interests of Cooper, to settle our dispute without the admission of wrongdoing to avoid the burdens and uncertainties of a protracted litigation. This allows us to focus our full energies on serving our community.

There's no question that this settlement is a significant expense, however the potential financial implications of a drawn out lawsuit were, in the long-run, significantly greater. I want you to all know that we made the settlement without impairing the current operations of the Health System, merit increases or any of our future plans and programs.

The Advisory Board was established in an effort to improve the quality and responsiveness of our cardiac programs. It was reviewed by outside legal counsel before it began operations. Cooper believed that the Advisory Board met regulatory requirements. The government disagreed. It is important to note that there is no contention that this program led to any unnecessary or inappropriate services at any time. Our quality of care has never been in question.

This settlement underscores the difficult regulatory environment in which health care providers must operate. The rules are complex, the margin for error is small and the financial consequences of even well intentioned actions can be substantial -- regardless of the necessity and integrity of the underlying medical care.

These efforts will continue -- a compliance program is dynamic and responsive to the changing face of health care. We have shared these initiatives with the government and our efforts have been favorably received. But make no mistake about it -- success in achieving a culture of compliance requires every single person in our organization to play a part, know our standards of conduct and be alert to possible risks.

With this settlement made, we look forward to devoting our time and resources to the many projects and initiatives underway to enhance the growth and quality of our System and meet the ever expanding needs of our community. The Cooper Heart Institute ranks as one of the top cardiology programs in the country and will continue to play a critical role in this mission.

We are confident in the future and our continuing leadership in medical education, research, and cost-effective, quality driven, patient-centered health care. You are our most valuable resource and I am confident that together we can move our organization forward to the next level.

Sincerely,
John P. Sheridan, Jr.
President and Chief Executive Officer
The Cooper Health System

Most of the time there is a lot of work involved to move to the cloud, and most of that isn't really related to AWS or Azure or Google Cloud. Before we talk about public cloud vendors and DevOps tools, there are usually several technical and non-technical challenges that are connected ...

With the rise of DevOps, containers are at the brink of becoming a pervasive technology in Enterprise IT to accelerate application delivery for the business. When it comes to adopting containers in the enterprise, security is the highest adoption barrier. Is your organization ready to ...

Enterprises are moving to the cloud faster than most of us in security expected. CIOs are going from 0 to 100 in cloud adoption and leaving security teams in the dust. Once cloud is part of an enterprise stack, it’s unclear who has responsibility for the protection of applications, ser...

21st International Cloud Expo, taking place October 31 - November 2, 2017, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA, will feature technical sessions from a rock star conference faculty and the leading industry players in the world. Cloud computing is now being embraced b...

Agile has finally jumped the technology shark, expanding outside the software world. Enterprises are now increasingly adopting Agile practices across their organizations in order to successfully navigate the disruptive waters that threaten to drown them. In our quest for establishing c...

There is a huge demand for responsive, real-time mobile and web experiences, but current architectural patterns do not easily accommodate applications that respond to events in real time. Common solutions using message queues or HTTP long-polling quickly lead to resiliency, scalability...